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Meet Our Faculty

Mike Bailey’s enthusiasm for his work bubbles over when he takes down 3-D models from the shelves in his office — a model of the Willamette Valley color-coded by the different types of geology, the surface of Mars, a hemoglobin molecule, a human skull. More...

Cora Borradaile’s unique style was evident when she interviewed for her position at OSU. During her talk, she needed to point to something out of reach, and without missing a beat she pulled a chair over and stood on it to make her point. More...

Bella Bose’s sense of community formed growing up in a small village in India whose history goes back over 300 years to two brothers who settled there. He can trace his lineage back to the beginnings of the town, as can all of the families there. More...

Serendipity, hard work and a call out of the blue from a favorite professor — all contributed to Ted Brekken’s career as a renewable energy researcher. But the initial hook into energy research was one you may not expect. Music. More...

Ask Margaret Burnett what is inspiring about computer science, and she does not hesitate. “The joy of creation,” she says. “With computer science, you can create any computer behavior you can imagine.” More...

Born and raised in Sacramento, California, Patrick Chiang says that coming to Oregon, and specifically OSU has made possible an opportunity to bring together his two interests: energy efficient electronics and improving human health. More...

At 7-years-old, when his remote control car quit working, Eduardo Cotilla-Sanchez saw a whole different possibility for it. He realized there was a similarity between the rotating motor and his dad’s electric drill, for which he had a particular fascination. More...

Change is a way of life for Pallavi Dhagat. Growing up India, her father’s business required frequent moves for the family. She and her sister were constantly adapting to new schools, culture, food, language, music, and dress. More...

“Tom Dietterich is known as a renaissance man,” says EECS director Terri Fiez of her colleague who has earned exclusive “Fellow” status in both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association for Computing Machinery. More...

As a teenager in Germany, Martin Erwig, who played classical guitar, decided it would be much cooler to play in a rock band. So, to earn enough money for an electric guitar and amplifier, he worked at construction sites doing physical labor like shoveling gravel and carrying stones. More...

It never snowed in Tunisia where Bechir Hamdaoui grew up. So, moving to Madison, Wisconsin for graduate school where it snows all winter was a bit of a challenge — not to mention the lack of televised soccer games. More...

Growing up an only child on a farm near Lowell, Oregon, Don Heer says he learned to self entertain — that is, when he wasn’t picking blueberries, shoveling cow manure, or training his “attack” pig named Gub Gub. More...

Matthew Johnston’s interest in multidisciplinary science and entrepreneurship is reflected in his career as an electrical engineer who specializes in developing electronic platforms that have applications in fields like chemistry, biology and medicine. More...

Education is very important in South Korea where Jinsub Kim grew up, but he feels his parents, and especially his mother, were perhaps even more enthusiastic than most. For Kim that meant many extracurricular activities that included sports and music. More...

“It was not expected I would go on to college,” Huaping Liu says. Even though he was top in his class, he came from a rural area in southeastern China where he knew of no one else that went to college. More...

V John Mathews began his path to becoming head of the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Oregon State as early as grade school. That’s when he first became interested in electronics, although he cannot remember where the idea came from. More...

Karti Mayaram admits he wasn’t all that interested in coming to the US for graduate school when it was first suggested to him by a college math professor in India — even though many of his fellow students were excited about the idea. More...

Growing up in Alaska, Un-Ku Moon had some tough summer jobs starting at the age of 16 — from working at a salmon cannery and on a fishing (tender) boat to landscaping he put in 12 to 16 hour days. More...

Amir Nayyeri is passionate about two things — geometry and soccer — both of which were fostered growing up in Tehran, Iran. He and his friends would challenge each other with hard math problems, and after school they headed to the soccer fields. More...

Thinh Nguyen’s escape to the US began with a solo swim to a small boat in the South China Sea. Born in Vietnam, his family chose to flee the communist regime which had blacklisted them because his father was a colonel for the fallen South Vietnam army. More...

“My blood is orange,” Linda O’Hara says, but it’s hardly worth mentioning if you see her on the Friday before a home football game. Dressed in all orange and black, from her earrings down to her shoes — it’s obvious she is a huge Beaver fan. More...

Jennifer Parham-Mocello was certain at the young age of 5-years old that she wanted to be a math teacher just like her aunt. She would line her stuffed animals up on her bed and use the blackboard in her room to teach them addition and subtraction. More...

An early introduction to electronics was nearly a shocking experience for Raviv Raich. His uncle brought a calculator home to Israel from a trip to the U.S., and his dad replaced the power connector so that it would work with the local wiring. More...

Stephen Ramsey initially pursued a career in astrophysics. Serendipity intervened to set him on a new career path in computational systems biology, and eventually landed him at Oregon State with a split appointment in computer science and biomedical sciences. More...

Computer science grabbed Mike Rosulek’s imagination early on, and at the age of 7 years he was already writing a UFO adventure game. Growing up in a technical household, his family home was connected to the internet before there was a World Wide Web. More...

Christopher Scaffidi was in second grade when he figured out that Oregon is where he wanted to live. “I decided I liked the woods, so I studied where the woods were and I found they were in Oregon and Maine,” he says. More...

“As someone who did not even dream of coming to the U.S., let alone be a professor here, I appreciate the transformational power of universities, and how they can improve the lives of people all over the world,” Prasad Tadepalli says. More...

Sinisa Todorovic admits that on the surface his two careers — ballet and artificial intelligence — seem unrelated. “I sometimes wonder why I trained for hours!” he jokes of his ballet career that began when he was just 10 years old. More...

Roger Traylor was not a stellar student in high school. Not even close. He was having too much fun in the small rural community in East Tennessee where he grew up — riding motorcycles, hunting, fishing, rock climbing, caving — anything outdoors, including growing an organic garden. More...

You might expect a college kid from California would not appreciate the small town of Corvallis. But it wasn’t so for John Wager who came here to get his undergraduate degree in engineering physics. More...

Andreas Weisshaar has always been up for a bit of an adventure or new experience. As a boy he explored his world by taking it apart, especially anything electrical such as tape recorders, radios and telephones. Fortunately, he was equally good at putting things together. More...

Although Weng-Keen Wong was born in Malaysia and has lived in the US since he moved here for graduate school, he will always be a hockey-loving Canadian. His parents moved from Malaysia to Canada when he was seven, hoping for better opportunities for their children. More...

Attila Yavuz’s path in life was shaped by his family and the culture of his home town, Çanakkale, Turkey, which had a rich history Trojan, Greek and Roman civilizations. The Troy was very close to where he grew up, which is fitting since the Trojan horse is an iconic symbol in computer security, his area of research. More...

As a young girl growing up in China, Julia Zhang had an impossible dream — to be a fighter pilot. The power of the jet fighters taking off vertically captured her imagination. And although her dream could not be realized, she still loves anything related to aviation. More...